In this widely hailed book, NPR correspondent Tom Gjelten fuses the story of the Bacardi family and their famous rum business with Cuba's tumultuous experience over the last 150 years to produce a deeply entertaining historical narrative. The company Facundo Bacardi launched in Cuba in 1862 brought worldwide fame to the island, and in the decades that followed his Bacardi descendants participated in every aspect of Cuban life. With his intimate account of their struggles and adventures across five generations, Gjelten brings to life the larger story of Cuba's fight for freedom, its tortured relationship with America, the rise of Fidel Castro, and the violent division of the Cuban nation.
A history of Cuba as reflected by the dynasty of the famous Barcardi rum family traces five generations during which they served as an example of business and civic leadership while alternately fighting for national freedom and honoring their country as exiles. 30,000 first printing.
In this widely hailed book, NPR correspondent Tom Gjelten fuses the story of the Bacardi family and their famous rum business with Cuba's tumultuous experience over the last 150 years to produce a deeply entertaining historical narrative. The company Facundo Bacardi launched in Cuba in 1862 brought worldwide fame to the island, and in the decades that followed his Bacardi descendants participated in every aspect of Cuban life. With his intimate account of their struggles and adventures across five generations, Gjelten brings to life the larger story of Cuba's fight for freedom, its tortured relationship with America, the rise of Fidel Castro, and the violent division of the Cuban nation.
The Bacardí rum company is one of the most successful and recognisable brands in the world. It spends millions on marketing itself as the spirit of youth and vitality. But behind its image as a party drink lies a very different story.In this book, investigative journalist Hernando Calvo Ospina brings to light the commercial and political activities of the Bacardí empire to reveal its role in fostering the 40-year long confrontation between the United States and the revolutionary government of Cuba. Through meticulous research, Ospina reveals how directors and shareholders of the family-owned firm have aggressively worked to undermine the Castro government. He explores how they have been implicated in supporting paramilitary organisations that have carried out terrorist attacks, and reveals their links to the extreme right-wing Cuban-American Foundation that supported Ronald Reagan's Contra war in Nicaragua.Bacardí: The Hidden War explains the company's hand in promoting 'special interest' legislation against its competitor, Havana Club Rum, which is manufactured in Cuba and promoted by the European company Pernod-Ricard. Ospina reveals the implications of Bacardí's involvement in this growing dispute that threatens to create a trade war between America and Europe. Exploring the Bacardí empire's links to the CIA, as well as its inside links with the Bush administration, this fascinating account shows how multinational companies act for political as well as economic interests.
“An incisive look at immigration, assimilation, and national identity” (Kirkus Reviews) and the landmark immigration law that transformed the face of the nation more than fifty years ago, as told through the stories of immigrant families in one suburban county in Virginia. In the years since the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, the foreign-born population of the United States has tripled. Americans today are vastly more diverse than ever. They look different, speak different languages, practice different religions, eat different foods, and enjoy different cultures. In 1950, Fairfax County, Virginia, was ninety percent white, ten percent African-American, with a little more than one hundred families who were “other.” Currently the Anglo white population is less than fifty percent, and there are families of Asian, African, Middle Eastern, and Latin American origin living all over the county. “In A Nation of Nations, National Public Radio correspondent Tom Gjelten brings these changes to life” (The Wall Street Journal), following a few immigrants to Fairfax County over recent decades as they gradually “Americanize.” Hailing from Korea, Bolivia, and Libya, the families included illustrate common immigrant themes: friction between minorities, economic competition and entrepreneurship, and racial and cultural stereotyping. It’s been half a century since the Immigration and Nationality Act changed the landscape of America, and no book has assessed the impact or importance of this law as A Nation of Nations. With these “powerful human stories…Gjelten has produced a compelling and informative account of the impact of the 1965 reforms, one that is indispensable reading at a time when anti-immigrant demagoguery has again found its way onto the main stage of political discourse” (The Washington Post).
A thorough examination of the history of the controversial island country looks at little-known aspects of its past, from its pre-Columbian origins to the fate of its native peoples, complete with up-to-date information on Cuba's place in a post-Soviet world.
The histories of sugarcane and its ethereal descendant-authentic Cuban rum-are closely associated with the legends of the Cuban nation, with its countryside, its culture, its music and its spirit. In this book you will discover the true roots of Cuban rum: from its relationships with people from explorer Christopher Columbus to author Ernest Hemingway; with places from the aging cellars at the distilleries to the legendary bars of Havana; and with its multi-cultural influences that they transformed into a distinctive Cuban identity; and with the embodiment of that persona in art, in literature, in music, in spirituality and in life itself. This is a tale of passion and imagery, in which kings and conquistadors, pirates and planters, master rum blenders and bartenders, international movie stars and industrial magnates, revolutionaries and romanticists each play a significant role.
For many Cubans, Fidel Castro's Revolution represented deliverance from a legacy of inequality and national disappointment. For others—especially those exiled in the United States—Cuba's turn to socialism made the prerevolutionary period look like paradise lost. Michael J. Bustamante unsettles this familiar schism by excavating Cubans' contested memories of the Revolution's roots and results over its first twenty years. Cubans' battles over the past, he argues, not only defied simple political divisions; they also helped shape the course of Cuban history itself. As the Revolution unfolded, the struggle over historical memory was triangulated among revolutionary leaders in Havana, expatriate organizations in Miami, and average Cuban citizens. All Cubans leveraged the past in individual ways, but personal memories also collided with the Cuban state's efforts to institutionalize a singular version of the Revolution's story. Drawing on troves of archival materials, including visual media, Bustamante tracks the process of what he calls retrospective politics across the Florida Straits. In doing so, he drives Cuban history beyond the polarized vision seemingly set in stone today and raises the prospect of a more inclusive national narrative.
Recounts the author's tour along the Spanish-American War battle trail to assess the historical conflict's enduring role in shaping relations between the United States and Cuba, discussing such topics as American imperialism and Guantâanamo.
The Cuban Revolution of 1959 was a benchmark of triumph and a harbinger of tragedy to come. Rather than herald a new era of Cuba joining the world community of nations as a paragon of democracy as many fervently hoped and believed it would, it became instead a new stage in authoritarian rule in the Western hemisphere. For more than a half century since then Cuba has been defined by the capacity of a single family to command and determine the fate of a nation—and to do so with a minimum of opposition. Incredibly, even those professing adhesion to democratic norms have been ready to forgive the dictator his excesses. This volume explains the theory and practice of this absence of internal opposition and the persistence of external support for the Castro family and its entourage. The Long Night of Dark Intent is chronological in order, with the author indicating major points in each of the five decades covered. The volume covers five centers of system analysis: economics, politics, society, military, and ideology. Who or what "determines" events and decisions is the stuff of real history. It is precisely due to variability in causal chains in society that we have huge variance in levels of predictability. The course of the Cuban Revolution gives strong support for such an approach to the Castro Era. This is a unique, unflinching account with a strong emphasis on the importance of U.S. policy decisions over time.
